


Beneath the Ice

by olivestrees



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alex Rider is a Mess, Dubious Science, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28806960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivestrees/pseuds/olivestrees
Summary: Alex should’ve known that investigating the cryonics lab for MI6 would get him locked in a freezing cell.What he doesn’t anticipate is the familiar face that greets him.
Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich & Alex Rider
Comments: 9
Kudos: 45





	1. A Familiar Face

**Author's Note:**

> The idea about cryogenics/cryonics comes up from the Artemis Fowl series, in the third novel, The Eternity Code. An amazing series!

When Alex regains consciousness, the first sensation he registers is _cold_. He shivers as he opens his eyes, looking around the chamber. The cell is vast, freezing, and unpleasantly damp. The walls are maybe fifteen meters wide, and there’s a tall ceiling and no windows. A steady _drip-drip_ alerts Alex to a leak as water falls steadily from some overhead pipe. 

The temperature of the room must be somewhere right above freezing; he can see his breath fogging in front of him. 

There’s movement in a corner of his cell.

Alex forces himself to breathe calmly as he turns his head to the disturbance. In the dim lighting, he can barely make out a hunched over figure. 

Deep breaths. He drags himself forward painstakingly, going as far as the chain will allow.

The man has a ragged beard encrusted with ice, and his skin is tinged blue. He rubs his hands together in an effort to retain heat. Alex can see that the tips of his fingers have turned gray.

There’s faint surprise in his pale, alert eyes as he sees him. “Alex?” 

When Alex doesn’t respond, too busy cursing his luck at being recognized, the man speaks again. “What have you done?” He speaks slowly but deliberately, as if each syllable costs him a significant amount of effort. Not slurring his words, though. Given the darkened fingers and blue skin, Alex can conclude frostbite, but maybe hypothermia hasn’t set in yet. 

He hates himself for thinking it, but at least the man won’t pose a threat.

That’s when it hits him — the eerily placid eyes, the blond hair, the high cheekbones. He may be more gaunt and in a fierce need of a shave, but it’s the same Russian assassin who sent him to SCORPIA and, consequently, almost to his death a couple of times.

_He saved your life a few times, too._

Alex huddles in the corner, drawing his knees up to his chest. He eyes his cellmate warily. Being in such close proximity to a cold-blooded killer reminds him all too well of his last time spent in prison. Alex almost wants to giggle in hysterics, but his mind is too slow from the ice-cold temperature and he can’t summon the energy to do so.

He grimaces instead. “I thought you were dead.”

“I might as well be,” Yassen sighs. “You foolish child. What are you doing here?”

“I’m nineteen, now. No longer a child.” When the assassin doesn’t respond, Alex continues. “I was investigating, what else? But clearly I got caught. That’s all I’m good at, it seems.” Alex can’t even muster up any form of bitterness in his tone, too weary from the cold.

There’s a pause as Yassen studies him. “What did you find?”

“A lot of dead bodies, mainly.” Alex shudders at the thought. In his mind’s eye, he can still see the naked corpses, covered in ice shavings and eerily still. “And enormous human-sized pods filled with ice packs. Some…tinfoil-looking suits, for insulation against the cold, I suppose.”

“Hmm.” Yassen slides down against the wall. “You have questions.”

He doesn’t need any further prompting. “What even is the point of all those pods?”

“Cryonics.” There’s a barely perceptible gasp as Yassen shifts uncomfortably. His face twists, whether from pain or disgust, Alex can’t tell, but he’s assuming the former. He lets out a wheeze that barely passes as a laugh. “Igor always did have a — well, let’s say _obsession_ with immortality.”

How many nut jobs can he meet before he hits twenty? Alex wonders. Apparently not enough. 

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.” Yassen’s eyes glaze over. “Back on Malagosto, Igor shadowed the Countess a few times. We are not meant to have preferences, you see; predictability gets you killed. But Igor loved a ballet by Stravinsky, titled _The Firebird_. It was his favorite work by Stravinsky, his favorite composer.”

The madman who captured him used to work for SCORPIA? _And_ Yassen knew him? Figures. Alex waits; clearly this strange digression will provide him answers.

“In the ballet, the main character fights against an evil being called Koschei the Immortal. A popular villain in Russian stories — he would hide his soul in a near inaccessible object for the hero to invariably come upon and destroy.”

“Like Voldemort,” Alex guesses. “From Harry Potter.”

Yassen’s lips twitch in a passing imitation of a smile. “If you say so. Of course, such stories are myth and fairytale; I imagine Igor thinks cryonics is his best bet to achieving something similar.” His tone turns dismissive. “Although extending life in stasis isn’t quite the same as immortality.”

“Is that why you’re so…blue?” Alex asks. He ruthlessly suppresses a pang of worry. He doesn’t owe Yassen anything; the man has sent him to his death far too many times to make up for whatever debt Alex carried. 

He doesn’t have to spell it out; Yassen knows what he’s referring to. “No, my old instructor didn’t use me as a test subject,” he says, with a hint of dryness in his tone. “Otherwise I would be dead.” He shakes his head. “Igor has always been more mad than scientist. He’s been trying to find a way around the temperature threshold the human brain fails at. With zero success, as you’ve seen.” 

Alex gnaws on his lip. Another question springs to mind. “Were all of those people alive when Igor started?” 

“Most of them.” Yassen inclines his head. “Igor sometimes kills his unwilling volunteers and places them in the cryo pods right after. Not quite immortality, you see. Insanity, yes.”

Alex shivers. Certainly off his rocker. They have to escape, and soon. “So what are you doing here?”

“Same reason as you, I suppose.” Yassen closes his eyes , letting his head fall back against the wall. “Igor wasn’t too happy when SCORPIA got dismantled. He wants vengeance. We’re here for him to enjoy it.”

“And before Igor got you?”

“In intensive care, and then months of interrogation.” Yassen opens his eyes. “MI6 and the CIA certainly make for gallant hosts. When Igor found me, I was barely able to stand, much less fight.”

The feeling Alex is bottling up inside isn’t worry. It’s not. But the rational part of his mind is screaming; Yassen, for all his faults, has always protected him in his perverse, twisted way. A tiny reserve of affection the cold Russian once held for John? If Yassen is in no condition to fight (and of course, just looking at him now would confirm that), then their odds of getting out are considerably slimmer. If anything, he’d be a handicap now.

“We need to come up with a plan,” Alex decides. “What do you know of Igor’s weaknesses?”

There’s no response. Yassen’s lashes have fluttered shut again, casting a long shadow on his waxy skin. He seems to have drifted off into sleep. Or worse.

Alex has to keep him awake. “Yassen!” His voice is edged with desperation. If he watches the man die again, he’ll never be able to sleep again. “Yassen, wake up.”

Nothing. At this distance, Alex can’t even tell if the thin man’s chest is rising or falling.

Alex hunches in on himself, fiercely rubbing his hands together and breathing on them. He will get out of this hell. He will.


	2. Captive Audience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yassen doesn't know why his life now seems to revolve around Alex Rider. Honestly, what else did he expect?

From a far off distance, Yassen can hear his mother calling.

He remembers the last time he got a cold before everything went to hell in Estrov. His last cold ever, actually. Of course, he had experienced nausea from tasting Sharkovsky’s food, and again from his vile son’s interpretation of an amusing prank, but he had never fallen ill after Estrov.

The last time he’d had a cold, it had been a bleak, overcast day in December, right on the cusp of winter. He’d spent the start of the month shivering under his thin bed-covers, sipping the bone broth his mother would bring to him.

 _Everything aches; his sinuses are clogged, and his head feels as if it is stuffed with cotton._

_“Yasha.” His mother’s voice is a resigned sigh._

But no — that’s not quite right, is it? The voice calling him is in a lower register, and more urgent than anything else.

“Yassen!”

He blinks. Opposite of him, Alex’s wide brown eyes are almost beseeching in nature. 

Yassen forces himself to sit up, wincing as he does so. He holds a hand up and marvels at the tinted fingers, equal parts idle curiosity and morbid fascination. How long will he last? The boy will have to find a way out without him. For a moment, he’s overcome with despair, the likes of which he hasn’t felt since as a captive of Sharkovsky’s, and then an abrupt jolt of annoyance. He can’t afford to wallow in self-pity; of all the people to finally defeat him, it can’t be that Stravinsky fanatic from Malagosto.

“Alex.” Yassen almost winces again at his croak. He hates himself for sounding so weak, his nerves frayed with constant exhaustion and the interminable cold that penetrates his skin and settles deep into his bones. “What were you saying?”

Alex examines him, eyes shadowed with something that might pass as concern. Yassen desperately hopes it isn’t pity. “What do you know about Igor’s habits? His weaknesses? You said that he already has preferences.”

“You have a talent for getting out of tricky situations,” Yassen grouses. Despite himself, his eyes slide shut; he pays no heed to the boy’s protest. “Can you not figure it out yourself?”

“I’ve already tried getting rid of these shackles.” Alex tugs on his chain for emphasis. The other end is securely affixed to the wall. Short of ripping the wall from its foundations or using specialized tools to cut the chain itself, there is no way of getting out of the physical restraints in one piece. And by the looks of it, the boy doesn’t have his usual MI6 toys. It’s a pity. “Besides, you knew him. From before.” His tone clearly conveys his exasperation. “And you’ve been here longer than me. When will they feed you next?”

Yassen purses his lips. He waves a hand over his body, his ribs prominent through the flimsy T-shirt and limbs stick-thin from muscle atrophy. “One guard, always different, comes every six hours, but lately they’ve failed to show up.”

Alex hums in thought. He distractedly swipes at an offending strand of hair that’s fallen into his eyes. The boy can really use a haircut. “This facility is three stories, with two guards stationed at every hall. There are two exits, one east and one west, and those are more heavily guarded. A contingent of half a dozen guards, I’d reckon. They drugged me and searched me before dumping me here, so I can’t say which floor we’re on. I tried looking for cameras while investigating, but if there are any, they’re really well-hidden. I don’t see any in here, as well. Although I guess it’d be easy to hide one, in this shit lighting. Anyway, our most pressing concern right now is to get out of this room.”

A part of Yassen is ashamed to admit that the boy has gathered more intel than him. Then again, he’d been comatose for the entirety of the trip to the facility; he hadn’t even seen the exterior. 

“Yassen.” The boy’s voice is almost a whisper. “Did you know? About my dad’s true allegiance.”

He’s almost taken aback by the change in focus, but really, he should have been prepared to answer this question eventually. In his dying moments, Yassen had considered telling Alex the truth. That his father was a double agent planted in SCORPIA, working for MI6. _He will die fighting SCORPIA_ , he’d thought. Plus, a painful revelation, even if false, would incentivize him to act. Hadn’t he been the same when he’d realized John was not, in fact, the model SCORPIA operative and instructor he adored, but rather a traitor who’d been manipulating him the entire time? And then Yassen had become an assassin. Alex didn’t have it in him; he was still young, and as much as Hunter had no compunctions about killing bad people, John still had strong morals. He was a principled man, and Yassen knew that had carried over into little Alex. So, he knew that as much as Alex would struggle with killing, he had hoped that SCORPIA could at least teach him how to survive. It was not like MI6 could match that caliber of training. Or was even willing to provide it in the first place.

Yassen’s attitude towards Alex’s involvement in espionage was much the same as John’s, if he’d been still alive, Yassen suspects. At least, at the beginning. A fifteen-year old kid had no business taking on missions meant for spies decades older and more experienced. However, several missions later, it became apparent to Yassen that MI6 wouldn’t leave the boy alone. The reckless kid was going to get himself killed one day. So SCORPIA it was.

And now…nineteen years old, no longer a child. At that age, Yassen had already been with SCORPIA for a few months. Still, Yassen can’t unsee the fifteen-year old who had promised vengeance for an uncle who’d, at best, wanted his nephew to follow in his destructive footsteps, or at worst, was preparing his only brother’s son for an early death.

It was a mistake to lie about John and send him to SCORPIA, and Yassen says as much in a show of uncharacteristic vulnerability. An assassin of his caliber doesn’t make mistakes. But it seems like Alex has been singlehandedly responsible for all of his mistakes recently.

Alex doesn’t reply for a while after Yassen’s admission. When the silence stretches on for at least a few minutes, he finally says, “We still have to get out of here. I might be able to deal with one guard and get his weapon. The rest of it will just be a lot of luck.” 

It’s an appalling plan, or, well, the notable absence of one, but Yassen doesn’t have anything better. If he didn’t know himself a little better, he’d say that he’s given up.

As if right on cue, the heavy steel door on the far side of the room groans open. A guard slips in, quiet and deceivingly unassuming in his steady gait as he approaches Alex. The man, middle-aged, is as nondescript as they come, with salt-and-pepper hair that’s graying at the temples, weary age-lines, and an emotionless mask that Yassen knows all too well.

His eyes sharpen as they take note of the belt slung low over the guard’s waist. Every time the guards had delivered food before, they’d stopped five meters away from Yassen’s limited range given his chain and kicked it over with a finely buffed and polished boot. 

This guard is remarkably careless; he goes well past that five-meter buffer zone and offers Alex a plate of unappetizing rations. At least the man still maintains some form of distance. As quick as a snake, Alex strikes out, delivering an efficient uppercut to the jaw and then a sharp jab to the solar plexus. The guard keels over. 

Yassen watches with avid interest as the boy’s nimble fingers make quick work of the guard’s belt. 

“We don’t have much time,” Alex mutters. “The guard’s wearing an earpiece. They’ll find out soon enough that he’s down.” 

There’s a faint _click_ as Alex unlocks his restraints. He grimaces as he stretches, slowly rubbing the reddened skin around his wrists. In an amusing contrast to his almost languorous movements, he bounds over to Yassen and holds up the key, grinning triumphantly. In his other hand, he holds the guard’s Makarov pistol. “See? First part of plan achieved.”

“You’re insufferable,” is all Yassen says in response as the boy frees him.

“That was almost too simple,” Alex comments, frowning slightly. He scratches at his hair absently with the gun’s muzzle. 

“Don’t dwell on it,” Yassen advises, although he also feels uneasy. He nods at the door, still ajar. “They usually send in one guard, but it’s best to be wary of backup.”

Yassen attempts to stand up gradually, but his muscles and joints fail to cooperate. He lets out a curse in Russian as Alex heaves him up. The boy is kind enough to abstain from pointing out Yassen’s uselessness. He’s a liability now.

“You can’t carry me out of here,” Yassen points out. “You need to go.”

Alex looks over him doubtfully. Logically, he has no reason to help Yassen; they both know this.

“We’ll figure it out,” the foolish boy says at last, after a brief pause where he most likely talked himself into this stupid, _stupid_ decision.

The boy half-drags, half-carries Yassen with the arm that isn’t aiming the gun steadily forward. Together, they stumble through the cell's doorway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to address the gaping inconsistency AH decided to leave in Eagle Strike, considering the events of Russian Roulette. That inconsistency being Yassen lying to Alex about his dad. I considered chalking it up to blood loss, but that doesn't seem very Yassen. Even to his dying breath, he'd be super calculating.


	3. Connecting the Dots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex does some investigating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here’s where the plot really takes off!

When Yassen had told Alex what the use of those pods was for, Alex had already known; Mrs Jones had briefed him as thoroughly as she could with her limited intelligence, after all. He’d wanted to see what Yassen knew, and, on top of that, some part of him was gripped with denial. Through his years working for MI6, he’d witnessed biological warfare, cloning, the most heinous, abnormal applications of science, but something about cryonics makes his skin crawl. Perhaps it’s the death by freezing. 

Alex shivers.

Stepping out into the hallway is akin to walking into a sauna. Relieved by the warmth, Alex plasters himself to the walls, sticking to the shadows. They appear to be on the second floor. The hallway overlooks a spacious first floor, and the building is designed in such a way that each circular floor funnels slightly inward towards the base. Meaning, that if the guards above them are cognizant of their escape, they’d simply have to look ten meters downward. Not to mention the contingents of guards on the ground floor. 

Yassen knows to press the advantage of the walls being out of the guards’ line of sight, a fortuitous circumstance that just so happens to be a blind spot despite the building’s structure. His eyes, always alert, are now hazy with exhaustion. Alex wants to snap at him to get it together, but he knows it won’t help, at worst serve to aggravate the assassin, so he keeps quiet. The darkness of the facility, almost choking in its completeness, works in their favor as well. There are wall-mounted fixtures every two meters or so, but they flicker ominously. If there’s that other guard as Yassen had said, he hasn’t spotted them yet. 

Alex peers down at the first floor. Suspiciously empty, but he’s not going to question it. Perhaps Igor had run through his latest batch of test subjects, and with one teen and debilitated assassin out of commission, he’d assumed there was no need to expend so many resources on the exits. No one left to escape. He almost snorts at the morbid thought.

As if sensing his inopportune amusement, Yassen shifts minutely to get his attention. He angles his head sideways to indicate the flight of stairs to their side, almost concealed in the murky darkness.

 _Get on with it_ , his eyes say, and Alex does as he’s told.

He levels the gun as he drags Yassen along with him to descend the stairs. They’re now fully visible to anyone who’d glance down (or up), but Alex can’t bring himself to care. At some alarming stage of his life, his never-ceasing paranoia had mellowed out, it seems, to a resigned apathy. When has his life come to this?

On the third stair, he pauses. Beneath the sole of his sneaker, the material of the step is almost spring-like in nature. Open closer inspection, he sees that the step is made out of wood, painted ash gray to match the rest of the steel stairs. He feels around the bottom of the step with his hands, prodding at the underside until he comes upon a small latch. He gives it a tug and hears a faint but audible _click_. 

Yassen exhales in exasperation as the steps begin to arrange themselves like some bizarre sort of jigsaw puzzle. Alex tugs him down onto his step right before it moves with a sickening lurch. After a few seconds, the stairs have been rearranged such that the third step from the top has travelled to the bottom, which has changed its trajectory from the ground floor to a hidden doorway located halfway up the floor’s wall.

Alex slants a puzzled gaze at Yassen before he steps off to approach the entrance. 

“Alex.”

Ignoring him, Alex peers around the doorway. The space inside is dimly lit, like everything else is in this facility, it seems; there is an avalanche of manila folders and paper occupying the space, with a massive cork board on the far wall and stereotypical red thread connecting tacks attached to scraps of newspaper. Beige file cabinets line the room’s perimeter.

_“Alex.”_

Alex stoops down to pick up the first piece of paper he sees. It’s a form for ordering some chemicals, he can tell; the filled fields deal with hazards, safety precautions, proper means of disposal and storage, and there’s a section at the end that details the vendor/manufacturer. Most notably, Alex can recognize the chemical symbol for helium, but not the nonsensical chemical formulas. He pockets the form for further study.

He wanders over to the far wall, where, besides the cork board, there’s a laminated poster, the kind he’d seen hanging around in primary and secondary school. The poster seems incongruous compared to the rest of the forbidding setting; even the red thread, a much-needed splash of color, reminds him of blood more than anything else. The tacks pin torn bits of newspaper in place. Unfortunately, the newspaper headlines seem equally grim: “CLIMATE CHANGE WILL THREATEN OUR LIVELIHOOD”; “BILLIONS AFFECTED WITH CLIMATE CHANGE”. He forcibly tears his eyes away from the cork board to examine the poster. Alex has dozed his fair share of classes (and missed a lot more) in environmental science, but he can still recognize a diagram of the atmospheric layers.

An ice-cold hand closes firmly around Alex’s arm. He whirls around to see Yassen, the man’s expression deadly serious. His skin has started blistering from the heat; they need to get him out for treatment as soon as possible. 

“Alright. We’ll go.” Alex shakes the unyielding grip off. 

They carefully clear a path out of the mess. As they return to the stairs and wait for it to somehow return, Alex kneels down to activate the latch. Nothing happens. He forces his muscles to loosen as he attempts it again. 

“Let me try.” Yassen stoops down. The only indication of pain is a fleeting grimace on his face, one moment present, the next gone. 

After a few tense moments, when Alex has started getting impatient, Yassen shakes his head. “It’s possible there is some form of activation within the room,” he murmurs.

Alex turns back to the doorway, mind already rapidly constructing his mental map of the space. They have to get down, and soon. Yassen needs immediate medical attention, and they’re around five meters above the ground floor. Not an impossible jump, but Alex isn’t sure how he’ll get Yassen down there safely. He’s made two steps before a sound from the ground floor stops him in his tracks. Someone issuing orders. 

Yassen is even paler when Alex joins him at the stairs, eyes fixed on the scene below. 

Thankfully, their vantage point affords them an unobstructed view. A ring of guards surrounds the floor’s center, where Alex’s gaze is instantly drawn to an enormous satellite dish stripped of its antennae and feedhorn. Standing off to the side...

If anyone knows to look, it would be impossible to miss how the stairs are no longer attached to the ground floor. Fortunately, the man Alex recognizes as Igor from MI6’s file is preoccupied with his chosen victim. The poor test subject looks to have been in his early thirties, with a fashionable goatee and pale skin. Most likely alive when he’d arrived, his body is encased in a solid centimeter of ice, lying horizontally in a cryonics unit. His eyes are wide and unseeing.

Alex forces himself not to recoil from the sight.

Igor is wrapped up in the tinfoil-like material he had seen earlier, complete with undoubtedly comfortable earmuffs and knee-high boots. In spite of himself, Alex feels a pang of envy. Igor turns to speak to a guard, lips unreadable from the angle. The guard nods and steps away. Senses sharpened from an intoxicating combination of adrenaline and dread, Alex watches as the parabolic dish powers up. It slowly angles itself so that it’s facing upward. Eight beams of intensely blue light form around the dish’s outer perimeter, converging at a point to build a conical shape. 

Alex’s only warning is a harsh exhale before Yassen seizes him by the collar and drags him back to the doorway. Clearly the assassin still possesses some reserve of strength. 

“What are you doing?”

Yassen methodically checks around the walls inside. “It seems like only one of us has a sense of self-preservation,” he replies.

Alex ignores him in favor of watching the scene unfold. One beam shoots out into the air from the tributary beams’ point of convergence. When Alex thinks it might pass the height of the second floor, the beam appears to hit an invisible barrier. Faster than he can blink, there’s a hair-raising sound as ice crystals instantly materialize within a force field. The force field is absolutely massive, forming a hemisphere that swiftly encompasses almost the entire room. Alex can see that the field stops only a few centimeters away from Igor, safely containing the effects of his experiment within the bubble. 

The force field’s surface appears translucent and dusty white, much like a snow globe that’s still settling from a blizzard. Within it, Goatee’s icy grave sits somewhere beneath snowdrifts, meters deep.

That’s all Alex sees before a door slides shut in front of him. He turns around to consider Yassen. 

The assassin looks the closest to peeved Alex has seen him; _probably upset that he hadn’t found the door sooner_ , he muses. 

“Your old friend seems to know more science than you let on.”

“He’ll be coming for us now,” Yassen says, predictably refusing the bait. “Now that he’s finished with that, he’ll notice the stairs aren’t in the right place. We need to leave now. Help me find an exit in this room.”

Alex scowls, but he quickly complies. A part of him wants to continue to investigate — dig up more of Igor’s forms, search for potential blueprints for that laser-shooting dish. But from a practical standpoint, they stand no chance against a dozen guards. Between the two of them, there’s only one working firearm and one person who can realistically put up a good fight.

He opens the nearest cabinet and peers inside. A stack of pages filled with Mandarin and Cyrillic characters. Again, Alex resolves himself to learn Russian and Mandarin. Two languages to add to his growing list. And with the reappearance of Yassen in his life, he supposes that Russian is even more necessary.

After much of the same process with other cabinets, Alex’s arms begin to ache from searching so earnestly for false bottoms or sides. He keeps an eye out for any useful information — dates, times, locations, blueprints, anything that might indicate what Igor’s plan is. However, all the cabinets contain are the pages inked with Mandarin and Cyrillic. 

Finally, on Alex’s search of his sixth drawer, Yassen says tersely, “Here.”

Alex strides over to see Yassen standing over a bookshelf that’s split into two. In the space between the halves, there’s a descending staircase that leads down beneath the floor. 

He hesitates, looking back around the room as if one last sweep will divulge that elusive information. It doesn’t sit right with him to leave all this behind, not when he’s yet to learn anything to return to MI6. 

Yassen’s expectant gaze meets his. He gestures wordlessly to the stairs.

Alex looks one last time at the room. Back at Yassen. “After you, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Actual plot :)


End file.
